


The Wandsmith's Apprentice

by marycontraire



Series: Nor Pomp Nor Blare [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Gen, Lots of Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Very On-Brand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: Mr Ollivander makes Dean an offer he cannot refuse.
Relationships: Garrick Ollivander & Dean Thomas, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood & Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas
Series: Nor Pomp Nor Blare [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1094472
Comments: 41
Kudos: 84





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sarapod for the beta!

Dean hasn’t set foot in the Leaky Cauldron in nearly two years, not since he passed through to buy his school supplies for Sixth Year, and the change in atmosphere is dramatic. It’s as full of cheerful noise as it was when he was a kid, before the whispers of You Know Who began to stir up the dregs of fear that witches and wizards had allowed to sink to the bottoms of their minds. The fear hasn’t quite receded yet, but for the moment it’s been overpowered by relief. The mismatched tables are full of witches and wizards laughing, sharing news, sharing meals, some likely reunited for the first time since the world went into hiding. All of them are wearing robes, save Dean, who is dressed in his jeans, trusted hiking boots, and wool flannel shirt -- all, of course, spelled to repel water and maintain his body temperature. (It’s July, but it’s been a cool, damp one.) 

When he was younger, Dean used to feel self-conscious entering the Leaky Cauldron with his Muggle parents, all of them conspicuously wearing Muggle clothes. A few times he even brought a school robe along to throw on over his jeans as they shopped for his books. He wanted to assert that he belonged, even if Mum and Dad didn’t. 

He doesn’t feel like that anymore. The war has taught him that he’s not interested in seeking the approval of the Pureblood wizarding community; rather, it’s they who ought to be seeking _his_ approval. The war also taught him a healthy appreciation for the practicality of Muggle hiking attire, and Dean sees no need to trade his in for medieval garb any time soon.

“Can I get you something, lad?” Tom, the barkeep, calls out to him. “A butterbeer?” Tom then gives Dean an obvious once-over, taking in all six-and-a-half feet of him and the uneven stubble that’s beginning to come in over his cheeks. “Perhaps something stronger?” he amends. 

“No, thanks,” Dean says. “Just passing through the back.”

“Of course,” Tom says, gesturing. “Mind you, most of the Alley’s still closed for repairs. If you need emergency potions supplies, you’d best try St. Mungo’s instead.”

“It’s alright,” Dean says. “Just meeting someone.”

In the back alley he withdraws the wand he’s been using -- eight-and-a-half inches, black walnut and dragon heartstring. He got it off a Death Eater he disarmed with Seamus’s wand at the start of the Battle of Hogwarts, and while Dean is grateful to have any wand at all, he despises the wretched thing. It’s a crude instrument that lacks the elegance and nuance of his beloved rowan and unicorn hair wand. While he was convalescing at Shell Cottage, Mr Ollivander fashioned Luna Lovegood a new wand, but he never made one for Dean. He’s rather hoping he is here to rectify that. 

He taps the bricks in the correct order and the magical gateway to Diagon Alley yawns toothily open before him. It’s as busy as ever, though not in the usual way. Rather than avoiding harried shoppers, Dean ducks by dozens of construction workers and deliverymen repairing damaged storefronts and delivering wares for reopening. 

Ollivander’s is at the far end of the main street, and alone of the shops on it, it doesn’t look as though anyone’s attempted to repair it. The broken windows are boarded up, and a large sign declares _CLOSED INDEFINITELY_ in what Dean recognizes as Mr Ollivander’s messy scrawl. The door, though, opens when Dean turns the knob and pushes gently.

“Hello? Mr Ollivander?” he calls out, stepping inside. The once claustrophobically well-stocked storeroom is in even worse shape than the building’s exterior. Shelves that formerly contained decades’ worth of Mr Ollivander’s craft are now nearly empty. Just a few wand boxes remain. The floor is littered with the broken halves of wands that Death Eaters must have snapped in a destructive fury. Dean stoops to pick them up, then rights an overturned table and sets the pieces down on its dusty surface. When he looks up, Mr Ollivander is standing before him. Despite the fact that he’s leaning heavily on a cane that he must have used to assist his walking, Dean did not hear him enter, which raises gooseflesh on the back of Dean’s neck. There has always been something unsettling about Mr Ollivander. 

“Good of you to stop by, Mr Thomas,” he says. It’s been nearly two months since Shell Cottage, but Mr Ollivander still sounds hoarse and weak.

“I, er, got your note,” Dean says. He digs into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out the piece of parchment instructing him to _Come to the shoppe at one o’clock tomorrow._

“Yes,” Mr Ollivander rasps. “I was wondering how you were getting along with the carving tools?”

Dean feels a sharp stab of disappointment. _I need a bloody wand, old man!_ he thinks, but he conceals his reaction expertly. Years of being a Black man in a white man’s country and a Muggle-born in the wizarding world have taught him to school his facial expressions. He withdraws the leather roll of tools from his other pocket with some reluctance. He has, in fact, been experimenting with them ever since Mr Ollivander loaned them to him, and they have recently begun to feel as comfortable in his left hand as a stick of graphite or charcoal. 

He holds the roll out to Mr Ollivander, but Mr Ollivander just waves one of his spotted, emaciated hands. “No, no, young man, you misunderstand me,” he says. “Those were a gift. I wish to see what you’ve done with them.”

Dean is momentarily stymied by this request. “You didn’t mention that in your note,” he says. “I’d have brought some things to show you if you had.”

Mr Ollivander once more waves the skeletal hand not clutching his cane. “I am not interested in being misled, Mr Thomas. I only wish to see what you carry with you.”

Mr Ollivander meets Dean’s eyes as he says this, and Dean is abruptly reminded of why he once found the man fearsome. His body may be weak, but his eyes are eerily sharp, and Dean knows better than to try and deny he’s carrying anything.

“And if I don’t want to show it to you?” he says, standing up to his full height.

“It is, of course, your choice, Mr Thomas,” Mr Ollivander says. He holds Dean’s gaze through the entirety of the ensuing silence, which feels to Dean quite long. 

Finally, Dean reaches into the collar of his flannel shirt and pulls the cord he wears around his neck up over his head. As he hands it over to Mr Ollivander, fear scratches its sharp fingernails over his back. 

Mr Ollivander accepts the wooden ring looped through the cord in his open palm and raises it close to his eye. It is a Claddagh ring, or, rather, a variation on one. Rendered in far more minute detail than Muggle carving tools would allow, two hands -- beloved, bony, freckled hands -- hold a beating human heart crowned in thorns. The heartbeat is no cosmetic charm -- a pint of Dean’s own blood flows through the wooden veins of the ring, propelled by the Celtic rune inscribed on the inside. 

“Exquisite work,” Mr Ollivander declares. “The artistry and rune-craft, both.”

Dean glares silently at him. 

“Blood magic is exceptionally powerful in protection spells. Of course, most English wizards fear it these days. Too similar to Dark Magic.”

“I’m not entirely English,” Dean says. It’s true -- although his Dad is a Londoner, his Mum is from Lagos, and his long-absent biological father was apparently Scottish. He does not offer any of this information to Mr Ollivander. He feels as though the man has already robbed him of more of himself than he ever wished to share with a near-stranger.

“No?” Mr Ollivander says. “Intriguing.” He extends his hand towards Dean, and it takes all of Dean’s self-control not to snatch the rune ring back. Instead he slowly, calmly returns the cord to his neck. “I’d be remiss if I neglected to point out that it won’t do your lover much good around your neck,” Mr Ollivander says, his eyes following the ring until it disappears below Dean’s collar, as though he’s reluctant to let it go.

“That’s my problem to worry about,” Dean says.

“Yes,” Mr Ollivander says, regarding Dean with a trace of a smile. “You strike me as a great keeper of secrets, Mr Thomas. An unusual trait for a Gryffindor, to be sure. But a valuable trait for a wandsmith.”

“I’m sorry?” Dean says, surprised enough by what he thinks he’s heard that most of his resentment sloughs away like dead skin.

“Cutting to the chase at last,” Mr Ollivander says, but he needs to pause for a series of rattling coughs. “I know you were hoping I summoned you here to gift you a wand, but I have a proposition to offer you instead.”

“A proposition?” Dean says, too confused to do more than parrot.

“I find myself in dire need of an apprentice,” Mr Ollivander says. “Like so many foolish men, I was arrogant in my youth, imagined myself to be immortal. And wizards with the right… _potential_ do not come along very often, Mr Thomas. By the time it was clear that I needed to pass on my mastery of the Craft, I had no suitable options. But the spheres work in mysterious ways that even we wizards do not understand, and now, at the very end of my days, you’ve been thrown into my path. One final chance.”

Mind still reeling, Dean says, “And if I don’t care to be your final chance?”

“Again, it is of course your choice, Mr Thomas,” Mr Ollivander says. “But I should caution you that I haven’t much time left. And I think both of us would regret it if my Craft died with me.”

Dean recognizes that this is the sort of life-altering decision he should really take his time with, but it’s less than a minute later that he says, “I’d be happy to learn from you, Mr Ollivander.”

“Excellent!” Mr Ollivander exclaims, a genuine smile cutting across his sharp face and making him look far less sinister. “I look forward to seeing you in the morning, then. Eight o’clock sharp, Mr Thomas.”

Dean extends his right hand and stops Mr Ollivander from turning back towards the stairs. “Given the circumstances, sir, perhaps you ought to call me Dean.”

Mr Ollivander grasps Dean’s hand in his own, and Dean can almost _feel_ the narrowness, the brittleness of his bones. “Pleased to meet you, Dean,” he says. “My name is Garrick.”


	2. The Great Glass Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean begins his apprenticeship.

It’s mid-afternoon when Dean emerges from Upton Park station. He’s had his Apparition License since Sixth Year, of course, being one of the lucky students who turned seventeen before the test. But he’s not keen on his aim with his current wand, and the last thing he needs is to materialise in broad daylight in the middle of a Muggle council estate and terrify a bunch of chavvy thirteen-year-olds on their summer hols. 

Dean isn’t self-conscious, precisely, as he walks from Green Street to his parents’ house, but he is aware of standing out a bit more than usual. He was something of a chameleon growing up, always wearing the tracksuit bottoms and trainers fashionable to his neighborhood peers when he was home and the slightly out-of-date, largely conservative clothing wizard kids favored at school on weekends. He can switch effortlessly between accents as well, blending neatly in with the estate lads in the summer, while using what Professor McGonagall would call “proper English” at school. 

He has yet to ditch his hiking attire and rucksack since his return home, though. He just doesn’t feel at ease unless he is at all times capable of Disapparating to the middle of a woodland and living rough for at least a week. His general desire to blend in with whatever crowd he’s a part of has ceded precedence to that concern.

When he arrives home from Ollivander’s, most of his family is still out. Mum’s on a twelve-hour shift in the A&E, fifteen-year-old Olivia is at some summer enrichment program for baby geniuses, and thirteen-year-old Gemma is probably out with her friends. Eleven-year-old Nicola, though, is in the living room, still wearing her football kit and bouncing a ball between her knees and the tops of her feet while half-watching a cartoon. 

“Oi!” Dean says as he shuts the front door behind him. “Mind you don’t break anything -- Mum’ll go spare.”

Nicola sticks out her tongue at him. “No danger of that,” she says. “I’m not a massive oaf like you.”

“Smartass,” Dean mutters under his breath, though it’s honestly a relief that his sisters have largely gone back to treating him as a nuisance. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle their onslaught of relief and affection when he first returned home after the Battle of Hogwarts.

“Troll!” she calls after him as he makes his way through the main hall to the kitchen, which is at the very back of the house. 

It’s Dad’s day off driving the cab, and he appears to be spending it surrounded by the contents of his toolbox, messing with the dishwasher, which has been malfunctioning all summer. Dean has offered almost nightly to simply do the dishes with magic, but although the prospect thrills his sisters, Mum and Dad have consistently declined. 

When he was still a kid, the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Magic obviously prevented him from ever showing them any spells, and then last summer, when he was of age, he wasn’t home very long before the Ministry fell and he had to flee. This summer, he’s noticed that his casual use of magic for ordinary tasks seems to make his parents uncomfortable. He’s not sure whether it’s the magic itself that they object to, or if it just serves as an unwelcome reminder of the danger Dean was in as a Muggleborn wizard. After all, what reassurances can he offer them that the Wizarding World will never go down that dark path again?

“Hand me the pipe wrench, will you?” Dad asks as Dean grabs an apple from the counter. The kitchen is small enough and Dean’s arms are long enough that he’s able to pass Dad the tool without moving his feet. “Thanks,” Dad says.

“How’s it looking in there?” Dean asks.

“Not so good,” Dad replies. “Might be carry-out fish and chips for dinner tonight.”

“And miss out on your gourmet home cooking? Say it isn’t so!” Dean exclaims sarcastically. 

Dad throws a filthy tea towel at his head in retribution, but Dean, laughing, catches it. It’s not that Dad’s a _bad_ cook -- he’s actually quite good at the only two recipes he knows, which, in true British fashion, are bangers and mash and a proper breakfast fry-up. He’s very popular on weekend mornings, but bangers and mash dinners frequently wear out their welcome in the Thomas household. 

“How was the magic shop?” Dad asks. “Bring back any doves or rabbits?”

“You know what I really admire about you, Dad?” Dean says around a mouthful of apple. “Your perseverance. Sure, that joke may not have been funny seven years ago when you first started telling it, but you’ve never let that stop you. Just keep trying. You never know when it’ll pay off.”

“Cheeky bugger,” Dad says. “How’d it go with the wand, then? Did you get one that works proper?”

“Not exactly,” Dean says. He hasn’t come up with a plan for how to explain the latest turn of events to his parents, who believe he’s returning to Hogwarts on September the first. He’ll have to tell them something.

“What’s that supposed to mean, ‘not exactly?’” Dad asks shrewdly.

Dean takes his time chewing another large bite of apple. Avoiding the issue is going to give the impression that there’s something worth hiding, besides which sometimes the best approach with his parents is to divide and conquer; when they present a united front, there’s really no moving them. “Actually, Mr Ollivander offered me an apprenticeship,” he says.

Dad puts down the wrench and sits back on his heels to get a good look at Dean. “That like an internship?” he asks.

“No, it’s like an apprenticeship.”

“Like in the middle ages with the blacksmiths and that?”

“Basically, yes.”

“So it doesn’t pay.”

“I didn’t exactly ask,” Dean says, feeling foolish. “But I rather doubt it.”

“So what you’re saying is you want to quit school before sitting your A-levels to take an unpaid internship. I can tell you right now, your mother’s going to love that idea.”

“They’re not _A-levels,_ Dad, they’re _NEWTs,”_ Dean corrects.

“Oh, right, I forgot, I know nothing at all about your world. I’m just completely clueless.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean says, frustrated. He scrubs his long fingers into his eyes, mostly to avoid Dad’s gaze while he clears his head. “I just --” He sighs and meets Dad’s eyes head on. “Look, all wizards need wands, right? And there are very, _very_ few wandsmiths in the wizarding world. Ollivander is the best of them; that’s why Voldemort kidnapped him during the war. Training under him may not pay initially, but it’s a pretty stable line of work in the long run. He’s never taken an apprentice before, and he’s… not in good health. So this opportunity won’t be on the table for long. And the NEWTs are just a test, you know,” he says. “I can probably sign up to take them at the end of the year and just revise independently.”

Dad grunts. “Your mother and I will discuss it,” he says, with an air of finality.

It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to say that he doesn’t need their permission. He doesn’t: at eighteen, he’s legally an adult not only in the Wizarding World but also in Muggle Britain. In the moment, he cannot quite resist comparing Dad to Ted, who despite being _older_ than Dad and despite helping Dean to master dozens of complex spells better than any of his teachers at school could, always felt like a friend and an equal, not a caretaker. Perhaps it’s because Ted never knew Dean as a child, whereas Mum and Dad probably see echoes of his five-year-old self in many of the things he does now as a grown man.

But there’s nothing more childish-sounding than asserting your adulthood to your parents, and in a way he appreciates that they still do their damndest to worry about his future, even if his future is something they’ll never truly understand. If it makes them feel better to argue about it, so be it. Dean nods and heads back to the stairs, discarding his apple core in the bin as he passes the kitchen door.

Dean’s parents’ house has two full stories and a finished attic. Mum and Dad’s and Gemma and Nicola’s shared bedrooms are on the second floor, along with the only full bathroom and the laundry closet. Dean and Olivia both have attic rooms with low, sloped ceilings. This made sense when they were younger and, as the two eldest, most in need of privacy. But Dean’s now grown so tall that the only part of his room in which he can stand straight without hitting his head is dead center, the highest peak of the roof. He no longer fits his short, narrow twin bed, which is still adorned with a West Ham Football Club blanket, but it hardly matters; since his year on the run, he can’t sleep anywhere but the floor. Even then, he never manages long stretches. He doesn’t have nightmares, but hypervigilance is a hard habit to break, and the smallest noise sees him hurled into wakefulness and grabbing his wand defensively. Mum, checking on him one night after a late shift and finding herself at the point of his wand, asked, “Couldn’t you do a magic spell to block noise from coming into your room?” He could, of course. But he won’t. Hearing the Snatchers’ inevitably noisy approach was so often the only thing that kept him alive, and even that wasn’t enough to save Ted and Dirk and Gornuk. 

Dean’s Hogwarts trunk, at the far end of the room, hasn’t been opened since last summer. He’s been living out of his hiking rucksack since the Ministry fell. Ted helped him spell it so that from the outside, it looks like a particularly diminutive day pack, but on the inside, it’s as roomy as a duffel. He carries it with him everywhere. Even here, at home, with a new Minister -- an Order member -- in power, he feels better with his bug-out bag at the ready.

&

After a much-interrupted night’s sleep and a shower during which he knocked over and spilled one of his sisters’ heavily scented bath products, Dean descends the stairs in the morning to find Mum, Olivia, and Nicola at the dining table. Olivia is attempting to simultaneously read an issue of National Geographic and spoon oatmeal dangerously close to her clean shirt, and Nicola, who dislikes oatmeal, is ignoring hers in favor of chunks of crispy akara.

“Eat properly, both of you!” Mum scolds. “Olivia, you don’t have time to change before you leave! Nicola, you’ll be starving after an hour of football camp if you don’t have hot cereal!”

“Morning,” Dean says, reaching over Nicola’s shoulder to steal a piece of akara.

“Leave your sister be, Dean!” Mum says. “There’s more in the kitchen.”

Dean holds up his hands in the universal gesture of _don’t attack me_ and heads back to the kitchen to serve his own oatmeal with banana and the remains of the akara. If Gemma wants to sleep late all summer, she can do without. Back at the table, the tea is dark and slightly bitter from being over-brewed -- just the way Dean likes it, though of course after his year on the run, he’ll happily take whatever food he can get. Mum, as is typical, lets Dean get a few large bites in before wading into conversation.

“Your father and I discussed your internship last night,” she says. 

“Apprenticeship,” Dean corrects around a mouthful of akara.

“Ew, Dean, chew your food!” Nicola says. “You aren’t camping anymore!”

 _Camping_ is hardly a legitimate description of how Dean spent the past year, but Dean is not eager to remind Nicola of this, so he just opens his mouth even wider to display more half-masticated fritter. Even Olivia puts down her nerd magazine to participate in the chorus of groans that follows.

“Enough, all of you!” Mum says. “Dean, don’t make me regret crediting you with some maturity.”

Sobered, Dean swallows his food. “Yes, Mum.”

“Anyway. Your father explained why you think it’s a good career opportunity, so we’re going to say yes, _on three conditions._ ”

This is excellent news. Dean was prepared to fight his parents on this issue if need be, but it’ll be far easier if they’re supporting him from the start. “What are the conditions?” he asks warily. 

Nicola doesn’t seem to care about the conditions and returns to picking at her oatmeal with the expression of someone forced to eat entrails, but Olivia, closer in age to Dean, is interested enough to abandon National Geographic entirely.

“The first is that we have to meet this Mr Ollivander.”

“Mum, you already met him when we bought my first wand,” Dean objects. 

“That was a long time ago and under very different circumstances,” Mum says imperiously. “We need to meet him again. We can come by on one of my off days -- check the calendar and ask Mr Ollivander what works for him.”

“Fine,” Dean says. Privately, he’s somewhat dreading this excursion, partly because his parents stick out like an augury amongst phoenixes in Diagon Alley, but also partly because he doubts the eccentric-bordering-on-creepy Mr Ollivander will make a reassuring impression on them. 

“The second is that you have to take your A-levels.”

Dean groans. “ _NEWTs,_ Mum. They’re called NEWTs.”

“Wizards work hard to make their acronyms as silly as possible, don’t they?” Olivia says. Dean fantasizes about flipping her the bird, but he doesn’t dare with Mum sitting right there.

“Your advanced examinations, whatever they’re called,” Mum says. “I don’t expect you to do all five of the ones you were planning on when you were at school, but at least three seems reasonable. You can let me know which ones you choose and come up with a revision schedule for yourself.”

Dean was really hoping he’d be able to dodge this, as NEWTs are difficult enough even with the Hogwarts curriculum forcing revision down your throat, but he’s not entirely surprised his parents are insisting on them. After all, the wizarding educational program of two major sets of exams was virtually the only thing familiar to them as Muggles. “Alright,” Dean says. “I should probably ask Mr Ollivander which subjects he thinks are most useful.”

“That sounds wise,” Mum says. “The third is that you need to get a part-time job. You’ll live here, of course, so you won’t be paying rent, but we’re not giving you spending money like we did when you were in school, and if you want food beyond what we’re eating for meals, you’ll have to buy it yourself.”

“Fair enough,” Dean agrees, grabbing his now-empty plate. “Can I get going now? Don’t want to be late.”

“You’re going to your internship dressed like that?” Mum asks, her tone clearly communicating her disapproval. 

Dean privately has no plans to change the way he dresses at any point in the future, but, casting around for an acceptable excuse, he settles on, “Shop’s still closed from the war, Mum. We may have to do some repairs.”

“All right, all right. I’ll see you for dinner, then. Give me a kiss.” She stands to take his plate from him -- a rarity from a woman who spent his entire life reminding her children she’s neither their cook nor their maid -- and Dean bends down to kiss her on the forehead. He’s significantly taller than both his parents, but he tries not to draw undue attention to his height, which he assumes he must have inherited from his biological father. 

Although it’s never before been his habit, he kisses both his sisters on the tops of their heads before he leaves, too. Olivia tolerates this in silence; Nicola giggles happily and blows a kiss after him, which makes Dean feel fizzles of warmth inside. The war may have been shit for him, but at least he had a home to return to at its end; not everyone he knows was so lucky.

Dean had been planning to take the Tube as it’s difficult to find a secluded place to apparate in his Muggle neighborhood, but Mum’s made him a bit late for that, so he winds up ducking behind a large dumpster and apparating to the Leaky Cauldron. He appears -- with a bang of displaced air and the crash of a porcelain teapot breaking -- in the pub’s kitchen, terrifying three house elves cooking over the open fire in a medieval walk-in fireplace.

“Sorry! I’m so sorry!” Dean exclaims.

“Watch where you’re landing, lad!” Tom the harried barkeep shouts from the far end of the kitchen. 

“Sorry!” Dean says again. “I was, er, aiming for the coat room.”

“Then you need to work on your aim!” Tom says. “Merlin’s beard! They’ll give an apparition license to anybody these days!”

“It’s the wand, actually,” Dean says, waving the cursed black walnut wand sheepishly in front of him -- and blasting another teacup in the process, to the obvious distress of one of the house elves. “I lost my own to some Snatchers. This is a… poor substitute.”

Tom’s expression softens. “I’d like to tell you Ollivander’s will be back soon enough, lad,” Tom says. “But it don’t look like that’s the case.”

“May not be a problem for me,” Dean mutters. When Tom looks at him curiously, Dean finds himself elaborating awkwardly. “Er… I’m sort of… his apprentice?”

Tom stares at him for a moment of disbelief, but then a genuine (if partially toothless) smile breaks out over his wizened face. “You don’t say!” he exclaims. “Well, that’s good news, and no mistake! Come back tonight, lad, and I’ll give you an ale on the house. It’s… Thomas, isn’t it?” Tom extends his hand for Dean to shake.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Dean Thomas.”

&

There has been no improvement to Ollivander’s shop since yesterday, but this doesn’t particularly surprise Dean as he pushes in through the boarded up door.

“Hello?” Dean calls out as he walks in. Mr Ollivander doesn’t materialize this time, and Dean is starting to feel like a bit of an idiot just standing there in the ruins of the store when he hears the sound of a tiny throat clearing in the vicinity of his knees. He looks down to see a creature that resembles nothing so much as the Yoda puppet from the _Star Wars_ films wearing a flour sack cloth as though it’s a toga. It’s the youngest house elf Dean’s ever seen, though how he knows this is impossible to say; there’s just something _cute_ about him. 

“Er, hi,” Dean says. 

“Master Thomas?” the elf says, and Dean winces.

“God, please don’t call me that. Just Dean is fine.”

“Master Dean,” the elf amends.

“No master,” Dean clarifies. “Just Dean.”

“Just Dean,” the elf says. 

Dean supposes it will have to do. “And, er, what’s your name?”

“Pippin!” the elf blurts cheerfully. “Come with us, Just Dean.” 

With that, Pippin scampers off to the back of the shop and opens a door that leads into a narrow, winding staircase. He ascends the first few steps with remarkable nimbleness, especially given that the risers of the stairs are easily a third of his entire height. He stops a moment, turns around, and blinks owlishly at Dean. “Coming?” he asks.

“Right,” Dean says, and he follows him up the staircase. Round and round they go, passing several claustrophobically tiny landings with closed doors. The staircase is lit by a series of candles floating in the air without the aid of any holders. The effect is appropriately magical but -- Dean can’t help but notice -- not entirely practical; most of them have gathered puddles of wax drippings beneath them, and Dean, taller than the average wizard, nearly lights himself on fire passing a particularly low-hovering one. 

They climb what Dean estimates to be a good five stories before they reach what appears to be the uppermost landing. Pippin withdraws a key from the folds of his makeshift garment and opens the lock of the heavy wooden door. Dean, concerned Pippin won’t be strong enough, helps him swing the door open. 

“Holy shit,” Dean says when he catches a glimpse at the space beyond, and Pippin meets this reaction with a distinctly childish giggle.

They’re standing at the edge of an enormous glass structure, several stories high and obviously built on the roof of Ollivander’s building, higher than all other Diagon Alley buildings save Gringotts, which Dean can see in the distance. The structure itself reminds Dean of the glass house at Kew Gardens, with the massive walls of windows joined by white ironwork, but despite the sunlight pouring in, it isn’t hot like a greenhouse. There must be spellwork preserving the temperature. 

“The light in here is perfect for painting,” Dean breathes, still enchanted.

“Not painting,” Pippin corrects. “Wandcraft. But first, clean up! Pippin is not allowed in the studio!” Pippin shoves the key to the door whose threshold they’re standing on into Dean’s hand and scurries away back down the stairs.

“Right then,” Dean says to himself, turning back to the magnificent glass room -- or studio, apparently. “Thanks for those detailed instructions.”

Despite the incredible beauty of the space, it is undeniably in need of a great deal of work. Although all the windows are remarkably intact, the room has clearly been ransacked by Death Eaters. The floor is littered with broken branches of wood, smashed glass vials, dented tools, and what look to be wand cores -- phoenix feathers, unicorn tail hairs, and dragon heartstrings, some still preserved in glass tubes, some loose in the rubble. There is a massive overturned hardwood table in the center and numerous broken shelves.

Dean decides to start with the heavy lifting. Mr Ollivander is too weak to handle it and he’d like to get it done before he comes up to tell Dean how the mess of tools and materials are meant to be organized. Even with the aid of magic, the studio is clearly a project that will take several days. Dean discards his ever-present rucksack, rolls up his sleeves, pulls out his wand, and heads for the table. 

It takes Dean hours to restore some semblance of order to the room, and as he’s grown accustomed to ignoring hunger in the last year he’s unaware of how much time has passed until Pippin returns. “Pippin brought lunch,” he chirps from the doorway, where he lingers carrying a plate that looks half his size. 

He appears to be sincere about not being allowed inside the studio, so Dean walks over to take the plate from him. It contains some sort of bread, a fresh-looking cheese with olive oil, some nuts, fruits, and sardines. “This looks lovely, thanks,” Dean says.

Pippin hums happily and turns to leave again.

“Hang on,” Dean says. “Will I be seeing Mr Ollivander at all this afternoon?”

Pippin shrugs. “Master Ollivander is resting,” he says. “Hasn’t been well since he came home.”

“Right,” Dean says. Unlikely then. Pippin steps out onto the stairway landing and disappears with a sound like a giant kernel of corn popping, leaving Dean alone to his disappointment. He wasn’t precisely expecting to be indoctrinated into all the secret mysteries of wandcraft on his very first day, but he’d at least thought he’d _see_ Mr Ollivander. Or Garrick, as he’s asked Dean to call him, which just feels _strange_. He’s never called a teacher by their first name before. 

The bread Pippin brought could easily last a few days with a preservation charm, but Dean reminds himself that there’s no need to stash food any longer, and he methodically cleans the plate. Revived somewhat by the meal, he decides he needs to start _some_ sort of organisation system for the tools and materials scattered across the room. Even if Mr Ollivander materialises tomorrow to say he’s sorted everything wrong, he can’t do much more with the lot of it all over the floor. He crouches down and begins to sift through the rubble, first with the tip of his wand and then with his bare fingers. 

Once again, Dean loses track of time, and his concentration isn’t broken until he notices a profound change in the light when the sun begins to set at nearly nine o’clock in the evening. Figuring Mr Ollivander is not going to check his work or officially dismiss him tonight, Dean grabs his rucksack and gives the studio one last glance. There’s still a considerable amount of work to do, but already it looks much improved. Dean feels a swell of pride knowing it was he who set it to rights and, after he closes the heavy door behind him, he withdraws the key Pippin gave him and locks up behind himself. 

Diagon Alley looks beautiful in the orange light of the setting sun. It remains free of the crowds Dean remembers from the time before the war, but nearly all the storefronts are repaired now and gleaming with fresh paint and brand new glass. Even the uneven cobblestones appear as though freshly polished. Dean considers taking out his sketchbook and capturing the moment, but he decides he’s too hungry to do anything more than apparate home and reheat whatever Mum cooked for supper. 

It isn’t until he passes through the secret archway to the Leaky Cauldron that Dean remembers Tom’s offer to buy him a drink. “Dean Thomas!” he calls as Dean wades through the crowd in the main tavern. He waves Dean over to the funny boxed-in bar in the corner. “What’ll it be, lad? Whiskey or ale?” 

“Er,” Dean says. 

Tom pours Dean two extremely generous fingers of Ogden’s Finest and gestures for Dean to drink it. Dean only just manages not to wince. He certainly didn’t abide by drinking restrictions, wizard or Muggle, during his school years, but there was no room for such frivolity when he was on the run, and it’s been well over a year since he drank alcohol of any kind. 

“Actually,” Dean coughs, “what I really need is a part time job. Any idea who may be looking? I figure you must know pretty much everyone in your line of work.” 

Tom gives Dean an appraising look. “How are you at breaking up fights?” 

“Well,” Dean says, still slightly hoarse from the burn of the firewhiskey. “My best friend has a legendary Irish temper, so I’d say pretty good.” 

“Right then,” Tom says. “I could use a bit of help around here. Been busy since the end of… well, since the start of the summer. Come by around six tomorrow, if Ollivander will let you go then.” 

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dean says. “Cheers, mate.” He raises the glass to Tom, downs the remains of the firewhiskey, and promptly decides he’d best forget apparating and just take the tube home. “See you then.” 

&

When Dean arrives home, Dad’s out on a shift and Nicola’s in bed, but Mum, Olivia, and Gemma are watching some BBC costume drama on the telly in the living room.

“Goodness, you’re late,” Mum exclaims. “Did you eat supper, sweetheart?”

“Not yet, no,” Dean says. His sisters are splayed out over the couch, so he sheds his rucksack and collapses on the carpet by Gemma’s feet. 

“I’ll warm you up a bowl of egusi soup,” Mum says, standing up and heading back to the kitchen.

“Thanks.”

“There were a bunch of owls here today,” Gemma says. 

“Yeah?” Dean asks. “Did you recognize any?”

“Just Fionn,” Gemma says, referring to the Finnigan family’s exceedingly funny looking Long-Eared Owl. “He’s still flapping about in the garden waiting for you to write back. We fed him and I tried to play with him in the kitchen, but Mum got hacked off and put him out.” In Nigeria, where Mum was born, owls are considered a bad omen. Mum, being a trained nurse, isn’t much for superstition generally, but she’s never really warmed to the idea of them delivering mail.

“Well, I’m sure Fionn appreciated the thought,” Dean says. Fionn, in fact, adores Dean’s younger sisters. Seamus has three _older_ sisters, but they’ve all moved out over the last few years, and Dean suspects Fionn has since seen a sharp downturn in the amount of treats, attention, and general coddling he receives. 

“Come sit at the table and eat properly, now,” Mum says, emerging from the kitchen to place a bowl on the dining table. Dean laboriously lifts himself off of the carpet and walks over to the table to inhale his dinner. Mum’s left his rolled up parchment letters on the table for him as well, and Dean opens them as he eats. 

The first is from Professor McGonagall, now the Headmistress. The Hogwarts term has been delayed until October the first due to repairs on the castle, but a list of required texts has been included. Dean will have to write her that he won’t be attending. He might as well inquire about registering as an independent NEWTs student while he’s at it. 

The next letter is from Andromeda Tonks. She’s written to him a few times this summer wanting him to come around for tea. He’s sure she wants to talk to him about Ted, and he’s been dodging her invitations because he doesn’t think he can handle that. He wonders how long he’ll get away with that.

The third letter is actually a postcard, and it’s from Luna Lovegood. She’s been traveling all summer, and Dean is surprised by how much he misses her company. They only stayed together a few weeks at Shell Cottage during the war, but it was apparently long enough for him to grow accustomed to her exceedingly odd stories and her strangely accurate insights. She’s sent him several postcards, all of which he’s hung in his room. This one has an unsettling moving illustration of a shadowy creature submerged in a pond. On the back, Luna has written, _The Swedish nøkk plays a violin to lure its victims into deep water where it drowns them. Happy Solstice!_ Dean laughs to himself. 

The last letter, of course, is from Seamus. _Moving to London for Auror Training,_ he writes. _See you soon, wanker._

This doesn’t come as any particular surprise to Dean. The Auror Department, desperate to shore up their ranks after massive losses in the war, published announcements in the _Daily Prophet_ and the _Quibbler_ inviting students who fought in the Battle of Hogwarts to join their training program, regardless of whether they’d passed their NEWTs. Dean isn’t wild about the idea of Seamus signing up for a career fighting dark wizards, and he hopes Seamus is at least genuinely interested in the job and not just taking it to avoid returning to the castle where he was brutally tortured last year.

Still, he can’t see any profit in nagging Seamus about it, so when he carries his bowl to the kitchen sink he grabs a pen from the junk drawer to reply on the back of Seamus’s parchment. _I’ll warn the London Fire Department,_ he writes. _Let me know when you arrive._ Then he heads out to the garden to tie his reply to Fionn’s leg.

&

Dean doesn’t see Mr Ollivander for three whole days, all of which he spends in the studio, absorbed first in the task of cleaning and repairing and then in organising the wood and wand cores he’s been able to salvage. Many of them, unfortunately, seem to have gone off. He can tell just by holding a vial in his hand whether the phoenix feather, unicorn hair, or dragon heartstring within retains its power, and it seems that in many cases, damaging the vial damages whatever preservation spell keeps the life in the animal part. Dean has amassed three unfortunately large piles of materials that he’s sure are no longer suitable for wandcraft. Even without their full magical powers, though, the phoenix feathers are beautiful. He’s hoping Mr Ollivander will let him keep them so that he can make… something. He’s not sure what yet.

“You made quick work of this place,” Mr Ollivander says from the doorway on the afternoon of the third day. 

Dean quickly drops the feather he’s been admiring and turns to face him. He’s wearing long robes, of course, and still leaning heavily on his cane. He looks as though the trip up the stairs from wherever his chambers are has exhausted him. “Perhaps you should sit down, sir,” Dean suggests, pulling a stool up to the massive work table. It isn’t until Mr Ollivander approaches and lowers himself laboriously onto the stool that Dean realizes the table is the perfect standing height for him, not for Mr Ollivander -- it must adjust itself to the current user. 

“Let’s see what you’ve done, then,” Mr Ollivander says. 

“Er,” Dean hedges. “You didn’t exactly leave me any instructions on how to organise everything,” Dean says. “So I sort of invented my own system. You’ll have to tell me what needs to be moved around.”

“I’d like to hear about your system,” Mr Ollivander says, piercing through Dean’s insecurity with his Sphynx-like gaze. He has blue eyes, but they aren’t blue like Seamus’s. Where Seamus’s are bold, almost like lapis lazuli, Mr Ollivander’s are eerily light and washed out, which draws more focus to his pupils. It occurs to Dean that this is the third time Mr Ollivander has manoeuvered Dean into showing his hand. Dean is beginning to be wary of what method there might be to his madness.

“Right,” he says. “Well, unfortunately I think this lot is ruined.” He gestures at the piles before them on the table.

“What makes you say that?” Mr Ollivander asks.

“They don’t have much magic left in them,” Dean says, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. “Not enough to power a wand, anyway. I’m sure they have other uses, though.”

“How can you tell?”

“Just, you know, feeling them,” Dean says. “With my hands. They’re not like the ones with the preservation spells intact. Even through the shields of the vials, you can just tell how strong they are.”

“Quite,” Mr Ollivander says. “Go on, then. What have you done with the ones that are still intact?”

Dean gestures at the shelves that line the room. They’re rather like apothecary shelves, with long drawers that are shallow and narrow, but they’re entirely made of glass, so that all the materials are visible at a glance. They’re beautiful, but they took Dean ages to mend. “Divided by unicorn tail hair, phoenix feather, dragon heartstring, obviously,” he says.

“Not just by type, though,” Mr Ollivander observes. “You’ve put them into nine different shelves.”

“Right, well I was just guessing,” Dean says. “But they all have a different sort of energy, you know. Some of them feel very powerful, but blunt. And some have less power, but lots of precision. And some are closer to balanced. So I divided each material into one of those three categories.”

“Fascinating,” Mr Ollivander says.

“Is that not how they’re meant to be divided?” Dean asks.

“It’s not how I had them before,” Mr Ollivander allows. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not a perfectly valid way of doing it. Now, tell me what you’ve done with the wood, young man.”

“I can’t exactly identify tree species just by looking at wood,” Dean says.

“That’ll come with time,” Mr Ollivander says.

“Right, so I just went with texture. Hardwood to softwood is left to right along that wall, with the straightest grains in the highest rows and the most swirls and curves at the bottom.”

“Fascinating,” Mr Ollivander says again. 

“I take it that’s not how you had it,” Dean says, feeling a bit foolish.

“I had everything organized by geography, actually,” Mr Ollivander says. “But your way will do nicely. Now, we’d best get started on how to properly marry the core to the wand. Can’t have you carrying around that ‘blunt instrument,’ as you say.”

“Sorry,” Dean says. “Do you mean I’m to make my own wand? I don’t even know what I’m doing yet.”

“You’re to make many wands, Dean Thomas,” Mr Ollivander says. “And I’m afraid there isn’t much time left to lose.”

“Hang on,” Dean says, revelation slowly creeping over him like gooseflesh. “Do you not have your _own_ wand, Mr Ollivander?”

“Garrick, please,” he says. “And they’ve all been my wands, at one time or another. How else would I know they were complete? Once they’re ready to choose a witch or wizard, I move on to the next. Would you be satisfied with completing just _one_ drawing, Dean?”

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” Dean says. 

“Then we’d best begin with a core. Shall we?”


	3. Gypsies, Perverts, and Mudbloods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seamus arrives in London.

There is something wrong with Garrick’s hands. It is most noticeable when they are at rest, a tremor that is sometimes subtle, sometimes violent. It recedes when he reaches out for something, but he cannot hold his wickedly sharp carving tools, which sheds some light on why he bequeathed them to Dean in the first place. Dean knows there is a Muggle disease that causes tremors like that -- a fatal disease, he’s fairly certain -- but he does not think that is the source of Garrick’s problem. Perhaps it is more revealing of Dean than anything else, but he’s convinced it has something to do with Garrick’s captivity during the war. Several times he considers asking Garrick if he’s had the Healers at St Mungo’s examine him, but it doesn’t seem his place to do so. It seems the sort of thing his family ought to worry over, but Garrick hasn’t mentioned family of any kind in the weeks Dean has worked with him, and he appears to live alone with Pippin.

Instead of relying on his own, Garrick guides Dean’s hands with his words. There is a great deal of consideration that goes into matching a core to a wood: it turns out that the most powerful, least precise cores require the straightest grains of wood to keep them functional. More precise cores, by contrast, benefit from the greater character of a knotted wood carved delicately along the curve. And the softness or hardness of the wood must balance the energy of the animal that gave the core. 

Balance, it seems, is the key to everything. Even the potions used to seal the wand inside and out must be precisely adjusted according to the character of the wood and core. And then there are the Runes themselves, which must be carved with perfect artistry along the wand to properly animate it. Dean’s always prided himself on the steadiness of his hand, but all of his muscles from fingertips to elbow are sore from these exacting new efforts. 

Dean has signed up for NEWTs accordingly, though he’s made no actual efforts to study yet. Potions and Ancient Runes for obvious reasons. Herbology both because it seemed tangentially relevant and because Neville’s doing it back at Hogwarts. Dean is hoping to beg notes off of him. Between Tom and Garrick, Dean doesn’t see how he’ll have much time to revise this year at all.

Dean finds it privately hilarious that Garrick trusts him with the invaluable and somewhat dangerous materials in the studio before Tom trusts him to pour a single drink behind the Leaky Cauldron’s bar. This is particularly amusing given that the vast majority of the Cauldron’s patrons aren’t ordering anything more complex than a butterbeer (which Tom has on tap) or a firewhiskey, neat. Nevertheless, Dean spends a good four weeks polishing glasses, chopping garnishes, and hauling kegs of butterbeer and boxes of whiskey bottles before Tom allows him to take a shift alone. 

On his long-awaited first night behind the bar -- a Tuesday, least busy night of the week -- Dean runs into Angelina Johnson for the first time since she graduated Hogwarts in his fifth year. “Angelina!” he exclaims as she collapses into a seat at the bar. 

“Dean Thomas?” she says with an equal measure of surprise. “My god, you haven’t half grown, have you?” She hurries along to the side of the enclosed bar and he leans over the awkward half-door to hug her. “Merlin’s beard,” she says. “I’m so glad you’re alright! I heard your name on Potterwatch during the war, and I was so worried.”

“Turns out I’m a lucky bastard,” Dean says, releasing her from his embrace. She sits back down at the bar across from him. As there aren’t many patrons about, Dean doesn’t feel too bad about catching up with her, though he keeps an eye out for Tom, lest he be once again banished from barkeeping duties. “What are you up to these days?” he asks.

“Well, back at work now that the war is over,” Angelina says. “I was doing a bit to help out with the resistance. Before.”

“Right,” Dean says. “What’s your normal job, then?”

“Oh, I work for St. Mungo’s, actually,” she says. “Just finished my Healer apprenticeship.”

“Impressive,” Dean says. 

“Well, it is hard work,” Angelina says. “But I like being useful. So what are you up to? Is this your summer job or have you graduated?”

“Not exactly,” Dean says. “Couldn’t go back to Hogwarts last year what with the Muggleborn thing, so I never graduated. But I’ve got an apprenticeship now, so I’m just planning to revise for a few NEWTs independently. I’m working here because the apprenticeship doesn’t pay. Can I get you a drink, by the way?”

“I’m waiting for someone, actually,” Angelina says. “But when he gets here, could you serve us some whiskey, but water it down?”

Dean raises his eyebrows at her. “Odd request in this place,” he says.

Angelina looks around her as if wary of eavesdroppers and then leans a bit closer to Dean over the bar. “Lee Jordan and I have been taking it in turns to George-sit ever since earlier this summer when he got completely sozzled and Tom nearly kicked him out. He’s taken Fred’s death pretty hard. Predictably.”

“Shit, I hadn’t even thought about that,” Dean says. He was aware of Fred Weasley’s death, of course, having participated in the Battle of Hogwarts himself. But in the immediate aftermath, the Weasley family was not his primary concern: he was too busy trying to get Madame Pomfrey to tend to the horrifying injuries Seamus had acquired before the fight even started. Dean shivers at the memory.

“Yeah,” Angelina says. “Hey, do you work here often?”

“Just four or five nights a week, when Tom needs me,” Dean says.

“Well, if you see him in here alone, don’t be shy about cutting him off, yeah? And owl Lee and me if he gets out of hand. We’re trying to keep it off his mum’s plate. She’s lovely, but she just lost a son, and… well, she’s never been a subtle touch.”

“Will do,” Dean says. “And I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Angelina asks.

“You went out with Fred, didn’t you?”

“Well, we broke up some time ago,” she says.

“Still,” Dean says. “It’s shitty losing someone you care about. Even if you’re not involved anymore.”

“Yeah,” Angelina agrees. “It is.”

As if summoned by their conversation, George Weasley chooses that moment to walk in through the Diagon Alley-side entrance to the pub. He nods at Angelina from a distance but makes a beeline for a booth in a secluded corner. “That’s my cue,” Angelina says, grabbing her purse. Dean pours the whiskies and employs a bit of sleight of hand to water them down with his current prototype wand: dragon heartstring and baobab, eight and a quarter inches. “Thanks,” Angelina says. “See you around, then.”

“Oh, sure,” Dean says. “I’ll be here.”

&

Dean doesn’t go to Ollivander’s on weekends, but Tom often needs him late on both Friday and Saturday nights, so Dean usually attempts to lie in on Sunday mornings. 

Dean’s sisters, unfortunately, respect neither his rest nor his privacy, and it’s a Sunday morning in late August when Olivia bursts into his room without knocking. As is now typical of him, Dean wakes immediately, grabs his wand, and points it at her in the doorway as his heart pounds.

“Morning, lazy,” Olivia says. 

One saving grace of having an entirely Muggle family is that his parents and sisters genuinely do not register the threat of being held at wandpoint. They’re aware he does spells with his wand, of course, but he’s never sat them down and explained that, for wizards, holding your wand on someone is akin to aiming a gun at them. Perhaps he should. It might frighten them, but then they really _should_ be frightened by his recently acquired panic instincts. 

“Dad’s done a fry up,” Olivia continues, oblivious to Dean slowly lowering his wand. “Since you’re still sleeping, can I have your plate?”

“Absolutely not, fuck off,” Dean says.

“Rude!” Olivia says.

“I’m coming right down, and you’d better not eat my food.”

“I’ll give you two minutes,” Olivia says generously. “Then I’m starting on it.” She closes the door firmly behind her as she leaves.

Dean contemplates getting properly dressed but ultimately decides that Olivia is probably serious about her two minute threat: she’s the most logical and academic of his sisters. Actually, Dean has frequently thought she and Hermione Granger would find they have much in common, though Olivia is far less insecure than Hermione. Perhaps it’s because Hermione is somewhat lacking in girlfriends, whereas Olivia, who won a scholarship to St. Paul’s Girls’ School when she was 11, has plenty.

Dean descends the stairs in his pajama pants and a now-too-small West Ham t-shirt to claim his fry up in the nick of time.

“Olivia was about to eat it,” Gemma informs him. 

“At least she had the decency to warn me,” Dean says. 

It’s one of those rare mornings where the entire family is home at once: neither Mum or Dad is working a shift, and Nicola, though she’s already in her kit, has yet to leave for football. “How was work last night, sweetheart?” Mum says as he digs into his sausage. “You certainly got home late.”

“Mum, it was Saturday night. I work in the most popular pub in wizarding London.”

“Make good tips then?” Dad asks. Dean had initially expected his parents to disapprove of his job, as he was disciplined several times (and deservedly so) when he was younger for drinking with his Muggle friends over summer holidays. It turns out, though, that Dad worked at a shitty pub for a bit as a teenager, and he seems to regard it as a rite of passage. At any rate, it’s certainly one of those things that really is no different for wizards than it is for Muggles. Dean may be able to speed along a few unpleasant tasks with spells, but at the end of the day he’s still clearing tables, cleaning glasses, pouring drinks, and making sure the patrons don’t get out of hand. A particular emphasis on the latter at the moment, as witches and wizards more actively involved in resisting Voldemort have not been shy about expressing their disdain for those who kept their heads down during his reign.

“Some, yeah,” Dean says. “Tom’s started putting me behind the bar for stretches. I think he’s glad to take a break, but he’s just barely starting to trust me not to fu--mess up.”

“Good for you,” Dad says. 

“Good sausage,” Dean replies. He performatively closes his eyes to savor his next bite, to the amusement of Dad and his sisters, all of whom laugh. His physical comedy is interrupted, though, by something tiny and fluffy colliding with his cheek at high speed.

“Jesus!” Dean exclaims, eyes flying open. 

“Dean Thomas, don’t you take the lord’s name in vain!” Mum scolds instantly.

“Oh, it’s so _cute!”_ Gemma squeals.

“It’s a teeny weeny baby!” Nicola says.

Ron Weasley’s ridiculous, tiny owl is hopping up and down in front of Dean’s plate, an extremely small note rolled up around his outstretched leg. “Cheers, Pig,” Dean says, reaching two fingers out to carefully extract the note.

 _“Pig?”_ says a flabbergasted Olivia. “It’s called Pig?”

“Pigwidgeon, actually,” Dean says, unrolling the note.

“Oh, I love it!” Gemma says. “Can we keep it?”

“Absolutely not,” Mum and Dad say in unison.

“He’s Ron Weasley’s owl, Gem,” Dean says. “He already has a home.”

“Can you get a teeny one just like him?” Gemma wheedles.

“Not a chance,” Dean says. “When I save up enough for an owl, I’ll be getting a useful one, thanks.”

Pigwidgeon hoots loudly in obvious indignation.

“Don’t listen to my mean brother, Pigwidgeon,” Gemma says. “Here, have a treat.” Pigwidgeon eats a single baked bean off Gemma’s finger with his tiny beak and hoots contentedly. 

Dean, who’s finished reading his note, pulls out his wand and lazily summons a pen from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Nicola, as usual, is delighted by the pen zooming into his hand, while his parents both attempt to conceal their discomfort. Dean scrawls a quick reply on the back of the tiny slip of parchment and beckons to Pigwidgeon, who puffs out his chest self-importantly as he presents his leg to Dean, clearly proud of his accomplishment in securing a response. 

“Bye, Pigwidgeon!” all three of Dean’s sisters call out as he flies back out through the kitchen to the open garden window. 

“What did Ron Weasley want?” Mum asks. Mum’s heard about Ron in Dean’s stories of school, of course, but the only Weasleys she’s really met are Ginny and Mrs Weasley. As it turns out, Mum and Mrs Weasley have similar ideas about needing to meet the parents of their children’s significant others, which led to a very awkward introduction outside the Leaky Cauldron before Dean took Ginny on a date in Muggle London the summer before his sixth year, when they were going out.

“It was Seamus, actually. Must have been borrowing his owl,” Dean says, moving on to his beans and toast. “He’s just arrived in London for his Auror program. Wants me to stop by his new flat later.” 

“Tell Seamus to come visit,” Nicola says. “We haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Mmm,” Dean agrees vaguely. “Pass the tea.”

&

Given that Seamus’s invitation came via Ron Weasley’s owl -- or rather the flying, feathered tennis ball that Ron insists is an owl -- Dean assumed that Seamus had found a flat with Ron and Harry, both of whom have also accepted the Auror Training Program’s offer to waive the NEWT requirements and take on any students who actively fought in the Battle of Hogwarts. He was therefore expecting to find a student-style apartment complex at the address scrawled on the note: 12 Grimmauld Place. 

Instead he’s faced with a long row of run-down looking Muggle terraced houses. Number Twelve looks the dingiest of the lot, but it’s large as well. Dean wonders how the devil Seamus, Ron, and Harry are affording it. Of the three of them, Harry is the only one with any money to speak of. They’ve certainly done their due-diligence warding the place, though; Dean can taste the coppery flavor of powerful magic as he bounds up the steps to the door and firmly pushes the buzzer. He can’t hear it ring from the outside, but just a minute or two later, Seamus Finnigan throws open the door amid a tremendous racket.

“Sorry!” Seamus shouts, dragging Dean into a very long, very dark, and decidedly Tudor-looking hallway. “I guess I forgot to warn you not to ring the bell,” he yells by way of greeting.

“Er, sorry?” Dean says as Seamus slams the door shut behind him. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness within, but once they do, he can see that the shrieks are coming from an unsettlingly realistic portrait guarding over the entryway. 

“Freaks! Perverts! Gypsies and Mudbloods!” the witch in the portrait howls as Seamus tugs at the long velvet drapes on either side of its frame. He doesn’t seem to be having much success closing them, so Dean rushes down the hall to help him. Once she gets a good glance at him, the witch in the portrait adds a few horrifying, antiquated racial slurs to her tirade, before returning to her apparent favorite, “Mudbloods!” With great effort, Seamus and Dean manage to shut the curtains, and the portrait at last falls silent.

“Sorry about that,” Seamus whispers to Dean. “She wakes up and starts shouting when there’s the slightest bit of noise in the front hall, and the doorbell is quite loud. I meant to warn you not to ring it.”

“What the hell is this place?” Dean hisses.

“Come on upstairs, where we can talk normal like,” Seamus whispers back.

Dean follows him up a staircase with heavy wooden bannisters and a row of what appear to be taxidermied house elf heads. Dean nearly bumps his head on one and recoils in horror. Seamus, though, neither acknowledges the heads nor slows down, and Dean follows him up three flights of stairs. His pale, narrow feet are bare, and he’s sweated through the neck of his loose t-shirt. (It’s unusually hot, today, for London.) He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms, the sort with the stripes at the sides of his leg. Dean can see the muscles moving in his ass as he bounds up the steps. Seamus always walks like that, like he can barely contain his energy; Dean walks more slowly, but each one of his long strides is equal to two of Seamus’s, so they’re a good match for pace, generally.

Seamus turns off the stairs at the landing of the fourth floor and Dean follows him into a bedchamber with dark, wood-paneled walls and an enormous four poster, at the foot of which rests Seamus’s school trunk, its contents spilling out in typically disorganized fashion. Dominating one side of the room is a fireplace tiled with hand painted images of magical creatures. Given the weather, Dean is surprised to see a large, blue fire roaring on the hearth, but when he steps forward, he feels a rush of cool air emanating from the flames.

“Clever!” he exclaims. “Like wizard air conditioning.”

“It is, yeah,” Seamus says, perching at the foot of the enormous bed somewhat awkwardly. Dean cannot tell whether his discomfort is due to a lack of familiarity with the strange room or the gulf of time between the two of them. Save for the night spent fighting the Battle of Hogwarts, they haven’t really seen each other since Seamus’s mother pried him away from school after Dumbledore’s funeral, and Dean is keenly aware that they lived different edges of the war.

Dean turns one of the antique-looking chairs by the fireplace around to face the bed and lowers himself carefully into it, dropping his rucksack to its side. “So you were going to tell me what the fuck this crazy place is?” he says.

Seamus laughs breathily. “Right, yeah. Harry’s godfather left it to him.”

“Sirius Black?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Seamus says. “Apparently the Order of the Phoenix was using it as a hideout before Dumbledore died because it’s hidden and protected by all sorts of old magic, but obviously the Black family were a bunch of Pureblood nutters. That portrait downstairs that was yelling at us, that’s Sirius Black’s mum. She’s not keen on Muggleborns. Or Travelers. Or Black people, apparently.”

“Why don’t you lot just take down the painting?” Dean says. 

“Many have tried. All have failed. Particularly brutal permanent sticking charm, so I’m told.”

“Ah,” Dean says. “Where is Harry then? And Ron? I assume he’s living with you two, since you sent his jumped-up parakeet to deliver your mail.”

Seamus laughs again; not his genuinely amused laugh, but his covering-anxiety laugh. “He is, yeah. They both went back to Ron’s parents’ house to get a load of stuff they realized they forgot when they started unpacking last night. I guess Harry’s been staying there since… you know.” Seamus pauses, then adds, “Hermione slept here last night as well. She’s going back to finish up at Hogwarts, but she and Ron seem to have sorted themselves out.”

“I’m shocked,” Dean says sarcastically. 

“Yeah, well, don’t feel foolish or anything,” Seamus says with a grin. “No one could have seen it coming.”

“You paying Harry rent, then?” Dean asks. 

“Not exactly,” Seamus says. “More like free manual labor. He wants to sell the house, but there’s loads of dangerous stuff in here the Order never got around to clearing out, and he doesn’t want to expose some unsuspecting buyers to Dark Magic. He’s letting Ron and me stay here free as long as we help tackle it.”

Silence engulfs the pair of them. Although Dean can see that it’s making Seamus a bit anxious, he doesn’t mind. He takes the opportunity to study Seamus, who himself is studying the rug beneath his trunk. He cut his hair sometime between Dumbledore’s funeral and the Battle of Hogwarts; it’s now quite short at the sides, and it’s slightly darker than when they were children. 

Dean looks next at Seamus’s fingernails, which appear pink and whole and healthy. When Seamus embraced him in the Room of Requirement three months ago, his nails were tiny distorted half moons, just barely growing in over tender, bloodied nailbeds. 

Dean stands to cross the distance between them, closes the top of Seamus’s trunk, and sits on it. Then he reaches out to gently grasp both of Seamus’s hands and raise them before his eyes. 

“They’re fine,” Seamus says. “Pomfrey soaked them in dittany and gave me Skelegrow. Sorted them right out.”

“You’ve stopped picking at them,” Dean observes.

“Yeah, well. You learn not to take your nails for granted when you have them ripped out with pliers, don’t you?” Seamus’s delivery of the attempted joke is rather undercut by the wavering in his voice. 

Dean lifts Seamus’s hands to his lips and presses a kiss into his nails. He can hear Seamus’s breath catch as he releases them from his hold. “Your back?” he asks.

“Fine too,” Seamus says. 

“I want to see.”

Seamus shifts at the edge of the bed. “There’s scars, like. But they don’t hurt.”

“I want to see,” Dean repeats.

Seamus lifts his t-shirt over his head, exposing his pale chest and stomach as well as his chain with the medal of the Virgin and Child and the protection rune on the back. Fat lot of good it did him, for all that. The Blood Magic rune ring suspended from Dean’s neck is far, far more powerful. 

Seamus shifts slowly around so that his back is facing Dean. A series of livid pink scars cross back and forth unevenly over the expanse of pale white skin like a skewed image of a grill. Dean reaches out to trace one of the lines with a long finger, and Seamus jumps and gasps.

Dean snatches his hand back as though burned. “You said they didn’t hurt.”

“They don’t,” Seamus says. “You just surprised me, is all.”

“Should I stop?” Dean asks.

Seamus is silent for a moment. Dean can see him breathing -- the expansion and contraction of his rib cage beneath the scarred flesh -- but he can’t see his face. Then, quietly, Seamus says, “You can do whatever you like.” 

Dean steadies Seamus’s shoulder with his right hand as he resumes tracing with his left. The whip lashes are all vaguely diagonal, but they vary tremendously in size. One in particular, mainly on the left side of Seamus’s back, is thick and oddly distorted, joining two uneven pieces of flesh together. It must have been an extraordinarily deep wound. 

“No one is ever going to hurt you like this again,” Dean says. It’s a promise, though Seamus doesn’t know that. If anyone tries, Dean will know. And he will kill them. Seamus doesn’t reply, and Dean doesn’t let go of his back until he’s traced every single lash from end to end. For several moments after, Seamus just sits there, back still to Dean, breathing loudly. When he turns around, his deliciously transparent skin is flushed pink. 

Dean smiles. “You’re blushing,” he says. 

“I’m aware, thanks,” Seamus says.

“I love the way you say that,” Dean says.

“Say what?”

“Thanks,” Dean says. “Your accent is always stronger when you’ve just got back from Glengarriff.”

“Got a thing for the Irish accent, do you?” Seamus says, looking down at his own hands. 

“No,” Dean says. It’s true. Seamus is the only Irish person Dean’s ever had a _thing_ for. 

“Are you going to draw me?” Seamus asks, lifting his eyes to meet Dean’s.

“Not right now,” Dean says.

“Oh,” Seamus says. “Just, you only look at me like… that _intensely_ when you’re drawing.”

“Do I?”

Seamus’s school trunk is much lower than the bed, so Dean has to kneel upright to bring his face level with Seamus’s. The first kiss is the smallest brush of lips against lips, of Seamus’s long eyelashes against Dean’s cheeks. Dean leans in for another, then another, and then he brings his hands up to cup Seamus’s neck for proper leverage. After a good, long snog, he leans back and, on impulse, presses a kiss to the useless medal resting between Seamus’s clavicles. 

“What was that for?” Seamus laughs.

“Just wanted to see if you’d freak out,” Dean says. The _again_ he assumes is understood.

“I won’t do that this time,” Seamus says. “I promise.”

“Don’t promise that,” Dean says. “If you freak out, it’s fine. We’ll stop. Or if you just want to, we’ll stop.”

“I won’t want to,” Seamus says with typical uninformed confidence.

“If you do, though, it won’t be weird. I won’t leave.”

“You sure about that?” Seamus says, giving Dean a glimpse at the vulnerability beneath the bravado. Over the years, Dean has learned to recognize these.

“I promise I won’t leave.”

Seamus nods. “Alright then.”

“My knees are starting to hurt, though,” Dean says. “Budge up, will you?”

“Sorry, of course,” Seamus says. He scoots backwards until he’s sitting in the center of the bed, and Dean climbs up onto the mattress, knee-walking over to settle beside him. Seated next to each other like this, the difference in their heights reasserts itself, and Seamus must notice as well, because he laughs a bit and says, “You grow again?”

“May have done,” Dean grins. “Measuring wasn’t exactly a priority on the run.”

“True enough.”

Seamus seems to be waiting for some kind of cue from Dean, so Dean tips his head back, supporting his neck with one hand, and dives back in. Seamus folds before his conquest like a house of cards. He hardly even seems to be breathing, and when Dean pulls back, Seamus’s deep-set blue eyes are half lidded, and he’s smiling broadly. “Since when do you have a beard?” he asks.

“Not a fan, then?” Dean says.

“It’s _scratchy,_ ” Seamus complains.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Dean says, pressing a kiss into each of Seamus’s eyebrows. His forehead is deep pink and damp with sweat. “Hey, Irish people can’t actually _blush_ to death, can they? Only I’m a bit concerned about you.”

Seamus attempts to give the side of Dean’s head a bit of a slap, but Dean easily catches his hand and holds it tightly. “Feck right off,” Seamus says.

“Mmm,” Dean says. “Not where I was hoping this would go, actually.”

“Hoping you’d get lucky, eh?” Seamus says.

“Luck wasn’t part of the plan,” Dean says. “Just seduction and defilement. I know how crazy you Catholics are about a bit of sinning.”

“Best get on with it then,” Seamus says, and he allows himself to be pushed back into the enormous mattress. Dean takes full advantage of this new position to plant kisses along Seamus’s neck and collarbone. When Dean continues down along his chest and gently bites at one of his nipples, Seamus whines and winds his hands in the musty antique duvet. “Can I --” he chokes out.

“Can you what?” he says, landing a sloppy kiss dead center on Seamus’s breastbone before continuing left to bite at the other nipple.

Seamus cries out and his left hand flies to Dean’s head, fingers burying themselves in his hair, which is considerably longer now than Dean ever wore it at Hogwarts. Ted offered to cut it once, but magic or no Dean doesn’t trust white people to know what they’re doing with his hair, so he just let it grow out. Or grow _up_ , as it tends to do.

“That what you were after, then?” Dean says into Seamus’s stomach. Seamus has muscles there now. The last time Dean had him pinned half-naked on a bed, four years ago now, he was just a skinny child.

“Mmhmm,” Seamus manages, carding his fingers gently through Dean’s hair. It feels nice against his scalp.

“Prefer that to the beard?” Dean asks, deliberately dragging the wiry stubble on his chin over Seamus’s stomach with a grin.

“Ugh, _stop,_ it’s scratchy!” Seamus says.

“Ah, sorry then,” Dean says, and he sloppily kisses Seamus’s abdomen in mock apology. He can feel the muscles jumping beneath his tongue. “Better?” he breathes into Seamus’s skin.

Seamus’s “mmhmm” comes out as a bit of a squeak. 

Emboldened, Dean slides a hand down to Seamus’s waist. His plaid boxer shorts are just barely peaking out over his tracksuit bottoms, and Dean hooks the elastic bands of both under a finger and tugs. Seamus makes a noise of displeasure when the front of the waistbands catch against his erection, so Dean sits back on his heels and uses both hands to gently ease the pants and tracksuit bottoms off. 

He spends several long moments greedily consuming the sight of Seamus, flushed and spread out on the bed before him with his legs splayed to make room for Dean’s and his fingers clutching at handfuls of the duvet. His eyes are squeezed shut. Dean cannot guess why, but he stretches forward to plant a kiss on each closed eyelid. “I’ve always thought your eyelashes were pretty,” he says.

“Feck off, pretty’s what you say to girls,” Seamus says.

“You don’t know what I say to girls,” Dean says. He means it as a gentle tease, but it causes Seamus to still and quiet in a way Dean doesn’t like. “I know you’re not a girl, Seamus,” he says, and he wraps his long fingers around Seamus’s naked cock, which elicits some far more pleasing sounds and no small amount of squirming. Dean has suspended most of his weight on his right arm, and his left is now occupied slowly stroking Seamus off, so Dean whispers, “Turn your face so I can kiss you.”

Seamus obeys. It’s a sloppy, too-wet sort of kiss, but they’re both too preoccupied to manage much more: Dean with the business of bringing Seamus off, and Seamus with the unfamiliar pleasure of it. It isn’t long, maybe just a few minutes, before Seamus says into his mouth, “Dean, I’m going to --”

“Go on, then,” Dean says, and he feels Seamus’s hips jerk wildly as he spills his seed all over Dean’s hand and his own stomach.

“Sorry, sorry,” Seamus mutters as he gasps for air.

“What are you apologizing for?” Dean asks, kissing his hot, sweaty forehead. “That’s sort of the intended consequence of the exercise.”

“Right,” Seamus breathes.

“No one’s done that for you before, then?” Dean asks, though he’s all but certain of the answer.

“Just you,” Seamus affirms.

It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to selfishly say, _Good_ , but at precisely that moment the ugly howls of the entryway portrait ring out up the staircase and through the open bedchamber door.

Seamus sits up hurriedly with a look of panic on his face, but Dean presses him firmly back down to the bed with one strong hand. “Calm the fuck down. They’ll have to deal with Mrs. Black before they do anything else, and I doubt they’re running straight up here to check on you anyway.”

Seamus nods and obeys, as Dean draws the dragon heartstring and baobab wand out of the waistband of his jeans; he is still fully clothed, boots and all. Downstairs, he can just barely recognize the tones of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s voices as they attempt to subdue the portrait. He notes absently that she seems more riled up by _Mudbloods!_ and _Blood Traitors!_ at the moment -- not so much by the _Perverts, Gypsies,_ and… Black people. 

_Scourgify_ works well enough for cleaning bodies generally, but Dean knows better than to point an unsealed prototype wand at Seamus’s exposed bits, so he instead Summons a washrag from the mess surrounding the trunk and conjures warm water to wet it. There is something oddly intimate about cleaning Seamus up by hand as he softens -- almost more intimate than getting him off, Dean thinks. 

“Oi, Seamus, you home, mate?” Ron Weasley’s voice calls up the stairs over Mrs. Black’s din. 

Seamus’s muscles stiffen again in fear, but at Dean’s nod he yells back. “I am, but stop shouting! You’ll never shut her up if you do!”

“Come down to the kitchen in a bit! We’ve brought real food!”

It takes Seamus a few moments to stop hyperventilating but, as Dean points out, “If he wants you to come down, he’s not coming up.” Dean passes Seamus his boxers and tracksuit bottoms and then climbs off the bed to reclaim his t-shirt from the floor. He turns it the right way out for him. 

“Thanks,” Seamus says, pulling it over his head. 

“Come over here first,” Dean says, steering Seamus by both his shoulders over to the blue fire. “You look like a cooked lobster.”

“And I’ll carry on looking like one unless you take your hands off me,” Seamus points out. Dean studies the graceful lines of Seamus’s body as he cools off by the fire, until Seamus turns around with an uncharacteristically bashful grin and asks, “What do you think?” 

“Less cooked lobster, more cooked salmon,” Dean decides.

“Probably as good as it’s going to get, then,” Seamus says. Seamus has a dimple on his left cheek just below his mouth that only appears when he’s smiling. Dean desperately wants to kiss it, but if he starts up again now, he fears it will be difficult to stop. Instead he grabs his rucksack and follows Seamus back out of the chamber and down the stairs. 

The kitchen, it turns out, occupies the entire slightly-sunken ground floor, with a back door currently opened out onto a small rear garden that may once have grown vegetables or potions ingredients, but has since been overrun by some sinister-looking magical weeds. As with most wizard kitchens, technology in the space seems to have abruptly stopped developing sometime in the sixteenth century: one wall is dominated by an enormous, walk-in stone fireplace. There’s no fire burning there now, but it’s crowded with all manner of metal cooking pots and utensils blackened by soot over time. If the massive timber beams supporting the ceiling were just a few centimeters lower, Dean would not be able to stand fully upright in the room: he stretches out his hand to check their height as he descends the last step, just to make sure he’s in the clear. 

Sitting on rough benches around the large trestle table in the center of the room are not only Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, but also Ginny and George Weasley, neither of whom he was expecting.

“Dean!” Ginny exclaims, obviously just as surprised to see him as he is to see her. “It’s good to see you.”

Dean wonders if she means that. She was frequently very _unhappy_ to see him at the end of Sixth Year, once she’d started going out with Harry and thoroughly proven Dean’s suspicions about her feelings for him -- which she’d vehemently argued against -- were completely correct. Dean finds, though, that he at least means it when he says, “Good to see you, too.” The troubles of his last year as a Hogwarts student seem not only distant but also embarrassingly trivial. 

“Cottage pie, either of you?” Ron Weasley says, gesturing to a large, half-eaten dish in the center of the table. 

“That’d be lovely, thanks,” Seamus says, collapsing into an empty bit of bench between Ginny and George. Dean walks around the table to sit in the empty seat across from Hermione. Probably in deference to the heat, she’s tied her bushy hair into a messy knot at the top of her head. It suits her better, Dean thinks, than the thick french braid she favored at school. She summons two pewter-looking plates from a shelf on the wall for Seamus and Dean.

Ron serves them each a sloppy scoop of the pie. “Mum made it,” he says. “Well, Hermione helped.”

“Hermione didn’t have a _choice_ ,” Ginny says from across the table, looking as though she finds this turn of events deeply amusing.

“Yes, well,” Hermione says, clearly less amused. “I’m not going to pretend that your mother’s casual sexism isn’t going to get very old very quickly, but in this particular instance the choice was between cooking and cleaning out about fifteen years worth of garbage from Ron’s bedroom, so I was more than happy to be locked in the kitchen.”

“Mind you,” Ron says in Seamus’s general direction, “she’s only gone and dumped half the vegetable garden into the pie. Doesn’t trust us to eat properly when left to our own devices.” Ron punctuates this statement by resting one of his large, freckled hands gently against the back of Hermione’s bare neck.

“I _don’t_ trust you,” Hermione says, barely seeming to register Ron’s gesture. “You’re going to subsist off of chips and beer, and by the time I get back for Christmas you’ll either be three hundred pounds or dying of scurvy.”

Seamus laughs. “Pie’s grand anyway, Hermione,” he says.

“Yeah, delicious,” Dean agrees. It _isn’t_ bad, either. After a summer of mostly eating Mum’s cooking, Dean’s accustomed again to a bit more flavor and spice. But after the last year, he’ll never take a meal for granted again, especially a hot, filling one. 

“What, you’re not going to dump hot sauce on it, then?” Ginny says, raising an eyebrow at him. It was a bit of a joke between them when they were dating that Dean found the Hogwarts food bland. House elves being wise to this sort of thing, different hot sauces would appear on the Gryffindor table near wherever Dean was seated. Ginny boldly tried all of them and couldn’t hack any -- invariably she’d wind up coughing, swearing, and chugging milk to neutralize the taste. Dean wasn’t aware they were back to joking about this, and apparently neither was Harry: he reaches out to carefully hold one of Ginny’s hands where it’s resting on the table. Ginny blushes.

“Don’t have any,” Dean says. “Maybe I should bring the lads some of my mum’s pepper sauce as a housewarming gift.” 

“Excellent!” Ron exclaims.

“Trust me, Ron, you couldn’t handle it,” Ginny says, but her eyes are still fixed on where Harry’s hand is covering her own. 

“Challenge _accepted_ ,” Ron says with fervor.

Seamus, who’s tried Mum’s ata dindin in the past, laughs around a mouthful of potato and vegetable. “Promise I get to watch you try it,” he says.

“Are you going back to Hogwarts, Dean?” Ginny asks.

“No,” Dean says. “Staying here in London, actually.”

“Do you need a place to live?” Harry asks. “We’ve got loads of room.”

Seamus flushes spectacularly and stares down at his plate, but no one else at the table is looking at him.

“Er, thanks,” Dean says, taken aback, “but after the last year I don’t think my parents are so keen on me moving out.”

“Right, of course,” Harry says.

Abruptly, Hermione stands up, grabs the empty plates in front of herself, Ron, and George, and carries them over to the stone sink in the corner, where she deposits them with a clatter. Ron, looking concerned, absently grabs Ginny and Harry’s plates and follows her to put his hand on the small of her back and whisper something in her ear. 

Ginny seems to know what’s going on, because she brightly says, “Right, let’s go up to the drawing room and open these, shall we?” She lifts two very old, fancy looking bottles of wine from the table. “Harry and Ron found them in the cellar. There’s loads more, but they do need to be thoroughly tested for poison because the Blacks were into some sketchy business.”

There is a general commotion as Harry, Ginny, George, and Seamus leave the kitchen as quickly and noisily as possible to give Hermione and Ron some semblance of privacy. But as the others scurry up the stairs speculating a bit too loudly about what the Black family’s wine will taste like, Dean finds himself lingering at the bottom step, hand against the low-hanging beam to stop himself bashing his head. He watches as Ron extracts the soapy washrag from Hermione’s hand and as she leans her head against his shoulder.

They’re sleeping together, Dean decides. Properly sleeping together. They probably brush their teeth at the same time, and Hermione probably scolds Ron if he doesn’t floss. They probably ask each other what time to set the alarm for before they climb into bed and have sex. And afterwards they fall asleep together and wake up together and come downstairs to make tea and they don’t care who sees them leave their room together or what conclusions they draw.

They’ll marry each other, Dean thinks. Not now and not soon, but they will. Perhaps this is why they had the luxury of fighting each other off for so long; perhaps they always knew that when at last they surrendered, everything would fall seamlessly into place for them. They’ll buy a house and have a redheaded child or two and their wedding will probably be in a church, with both sets of their parents teary-eyed. Dean will probably go to their wedding. He and Seamus will both be seated at the singles table. 

He’s jealous of them, Dean realizes. He thought he might be jealous of Ginny and Harry because he _did_ care for Ginny and it _did_ hurt to realise he’d been her second choice all along. But he’s not jealous of their happiness and he’s certainly not jealous of their tentative hand-holding and their blushes. He’s jealous of Ron knowing exactly what upset Hermione. He’s jealous of the way he put his hand around her neck at the table in front of everybody and the way she didn’t even blush or really seem to notice. He’s jealous of them now, doing the dishes together.

Quietly, so as not to draw attention to his continued presence, Dean creeps up the stairs to the drawing room after the others. He is exceptionally aware of the weight of the Claddagh ring on its cord against his chest. He had rather hoped Seamus might see it and ask about it, giving him an opening to slide it over his finger. But of course Seamus didn’t see it because Dean didn’t manage to shed even one article of clothing before climbing into bed with him.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this intending the Prologue to be a short standalone in my Dean Thomas series, but it felt like the beginning of a much longer story. So I have begun to write that story. I should warn you all, though, that I have very little faith in my own ability to keep up with deadlines in a WiP. But, hey, there's a first time for everything, right?


End file.
